


nothing movielike

by Sierra



Category: Free!
Genre: Canon Compliant, Friends With Benefits, Getting Together, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, Post-Canon, Slice of Life, Undecided Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-09-15 23:20:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9263258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sierra/pseuds/Sierra
Summary: Sousuke gets promoted, and as his work life is on a steep upward trajectory, the equilibrium of his personal life is disrupted in more ways than one.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ishka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishka/gifts).



> slightly belated xmas gift for iska, who continues to singlehandedly fuel my soumako fire with tireless enthusiasm. :>
> 
> set many many years post-canon, likely 10+.
> 
> also, this assumes makoto went to university in a city other than tokyo.

_Waiting to see a sign?_  
_Then you've seen the best already_

* * *

 

Sousuke’s new promotion means two things: he has to travel twice a month to earn a half-decent living, and he’s never breaking in his new bamboo memory foam mattress.

He realises the mistake in telling Rin over a late lunch one blisteringly-hot August afternoon the moment he shares it, having assumed that any competitive streak between them fizzled from a raging inferno down to dying embers when Sousuke’s shoulder went out of commission all those years ago.

Leave it to Rin to cling to a decade-old rivalry even if it's dead in the water.

Sousuke’s been above being drawn into bickering since he scored a corporate job. The only person more enthused by the news was Gou, and that was because it gave her an excuse to upgrade and reinvent his wardrobe, which has always been referred to as “outdated” by both Matsuokas.

A real job means suits, ties, shoes that took a month to wear in to the point they stopped giving him blisters. It also entails long hours, mind-numbing meetings, and lunches with older men Sousuke has no interest in socialising with outside of a chance to boost his way up the ladder. He has bigger problems to worry about than Rin’s misguided belief that he’ll be staying at the Four Seasons when he travels, or enjoying endless refills of Suntory Royal while meetings are held in spa suites and attended by topless waitresses. His salary increase comes with a handful of new and frankly unwanted responsibilities, but he doesn’t expect Rin to understand.

His internationally-ranked, globetrotting childhood friend with an especially persistent and seemingly incurable case of wanderlust.

Rin is dithering between envy and mild annoyance, and he makes no secret of it. His brows furrow and his mouth pinches. “You hate planes.”

Sousuke ignores him in favour of the steaming bowl of butajiru.

“I hate you, too, sometimes,” he says tartly. “Doesn’t stop me from seeing you.”

“That’s not even _close_ to the same,” Rin barks, throwing down his chopsticks. “You’ll hardly be home now, what am I gonna do when Haru—” His lips twist into a petulant expression unbecoming of Japan’s fastest butterfly swimmer. “When he doesn’t, when he won’t, when he—“

Sousuke almost wishes he had enough mobility left in his shoulder joint to challenge Rin for that title.

“Gets sick of listening to you?” he finishes, smirking. “You could always try Makoto.”

“He listens but he doesn’t _listen_.”

Sousuke translates that in a heartbeat: “He doesn’t tell you what you want to hear.”

Rin folds his arms, slumps back. “Neither do you.”

He has a valid point, but like hell is Sousuke handing him that to cling to for the next five months. Rin creates his own cannon fodder and needs no help.

“It’s a couple of times a month,” Sousuke says to divert the topic, shovelling a piece of pork into his mouth. “You can call, email. Not like I’m moving away.”

“You might as well be,” Rin mutters with a pronounced sulk, glaring across the restaurant. A server construes the look as dissatisfaction and hurries over to wait on Rin hand and foot—just the way he likes—only to be dismissed with a wave and a mumble of _no, no, no_. “You’ll just never _be_ here. And Makoto is closer to you than me these days, you know? When the hell did it get that way?”

Sousuke lets out a sigh. “Since you spent three years abroad travelling and nearly seven either competing or training nonstop. You weren’t here, Rin. Did you expect everything to stay the same?”

“You did,” Rin counters, stubborn to the last. “Haru didn’t change.”

“Haru never does,” Sousuke says, but his voice tapers off when his phone lights up in the pocket of his jacket, strewn over the neighbouring chair. He knows who it is without checking the name or message. “And Makoto isn’t me or Haru. You’re home now. Put in the time and work for it.” He grins. “And if you don’t, Makoto will make you.”

* * *

Makoto is at Sousuke’s doorstep well before he gets home, blazer flung over his shoulder. His smile is radiant when he sees Sousuke at the bottom of the stairwell, and he rises as Sousuke ascends the steps with weary feet. Rin has a way of draining him so thoroughly when he’s in a mood to pick and pluck at the problem.

This week it’s the news that Sousuke has two business trips a month, restricting Rin’s access to him, which he takes advantage of next to never. That would require Rin being in the _country_ in the first place. Sousuke doesn’t have the patience left to point out the hypocrisy in Rin’s contention with his promotion.

“It didn’t go well with Rin, then?” Makoto guesses.

Sousuke cuts him a sharp glance and wonders if he’s always been transparent or if Makoto has just become unnervingly adept at reading him. That goes hand-in-hand with the state of their not-relationship as it stands now, at some backwoods crossroad that neither is willing to choose a direction for.

“Maybe next time he should be the first to know instead of the last,” he muses, unlocking the door and heaping his bag and jacket on the table. “Get it out of the way.”

Without waiting for permission, Makoto follows him in, affording Sousuke one less forced nicety. He says a silent prayer of thanks.

“It’s done, at least.”

“Yeah, he thinks he’s being abandoned,” Sousuke mutters, yanking his tie loose. “Great outcome.”

Makoto’s brow knits. “Does he know it’s four days at a time? Including flights?”

“Didn’t get into details.”

“Understandable,” Makoto says, seating himself at the counter while Sousuke rifles through the fridge for two bottles of Sapporo and half a box of leftover yakisoba. “Did he calm down?”

“After I told him he should try to reconnect with you.”

“Maybe I’ll start by catching him up on what’s been happening since he left,” Makoto murmurs as he twists the cap off the bottle. It’s said so casually that it almost escapes Sousuke’s notice until Makoto’s voice lilts to the tone that spirals heat down his spine. Less than five minutes into his visit, no less. “Would you mind if he knew?”

Sousuke picks the meat out at his leisure, buying himself a moment for thought. It serves as a distraction, too; his late lunch with Rin was too tense and fraught with emotion to let him appreciate the food. It sat heavy in his stomach all afternoon like a lead weight, a discomfort second only to the way he left Rin at the table, vexed and far from coming to grips with a change in Sousuke’s life. He needs time to process it, and Sousuke has always been content to give it.

“What’s there to know?” he asks at length. “Be more specific.”

“You,” Makoto says, “and me.”

Even on the opposite side of the counter, he’s too close to Sousuke.

He could be half a world away and still make Sousuke feel the way he does. A bit apprehensive but unequivocally hungry for more of this, whatever it is. Soon, Sousuke thinks, they’ll get a chance to test just how distance might affect them, and maybe that’s when it will stop working. It won’t be convenient, it won’t be undefined, and it certainly won’t be as fucking _easy_.

Especially not with Rin back on the scene. He hasn’t changed much over the years, but Sousuke considers himself wildly out of touch with Rin’s emotions or being able to predict him in any capacity.

And what he has with Makoto is a wildcard.

Sousuke drops a shoulder in a shrug. “If you want.”

“I wonder if he’d like to know,” Makoto says with a pensive bite of his lip. “Or maybe it’s better left alone.”

“You sounded so certain he would a minute ago,” Sousuke mutters, averting his gaze when Makoto’s gaze drifts somewhere between playful and knowing. “He’ll find out from someone.”

Makoto winces. “Right. Everyone knows but him.”

“Again.”

“So let’s tell him,” Makoto says resolutely. “He deserves to hear it from you or me, not Haru or Nagisa or—”

“Gou will give him unnecessary details,” Sousuke finishes for him. “If you didn’t overshare while you were drunk around her, Rin might have been spared from knowing you suffer from whisky dick.”

“Maybe I should do it, then. You’ll just drop it on him like a nuclear warhead and he’ll be back in Barcelona partying before we know it. He’s going to need time to adjust.”

“You do that,” Sousuke agrees, surrendering the remainder of the yakisoba to Makoto. “Tell him we fuck.”

A few years ago, Makoto might have had the decency to look a bit ashamed of himself. For what, Sousuke wouldn’t have had a fucking clue. For acting on his desire without giving Haru a thorough rundown, or for making the first move on Sousuke. He never cared about the why or how, but Makoto as Sousuke had known him then was more passive, more prone to internalizing and suppressing and passing it off like leaves in a breeze.

Now, though, he’s unaffected. He gazes across at Sousuke intently, at ease with what they are.

It’s been a long time since Sousuke had any doubts, either.

“In those exact words?” Makoto presses, lips quirking. “Soften it a bit.”

“Yeah.” Sousuke pops the lid off his beer and throws back a mouthful that cools the ache low in his abdomen, burning away since he saw Makoto. “Rin will want to hear how you laid flowers at my feet and romanced me at some fancy five-star restaurant,” he grins. “Better not tell him about the bathroom of the dive bar, though.”

“It had good food,” Makoto retorts. “Or else you wouldn’t have come onto me so fast.”

“Can’t argue with that. Way to a man’s heart and all.”

“I didn’t know you held me in such high esteem, Sousuke.”

“I do.”

Makoto is trying to conceal a smile when he slaps the lid back on the empty box. “So I’m sticking with the truth. We’re just good friends who sometimes have sleepovers…and a lot of sex.”

Sousuke groans. “I said no details.”

“He’s going to ask,” Makoto says, and Sousuke hates that, because he knows it’s true. Rin’s imagination will just fill in the blanks if they don’t. Sousuke doesn’t know which is worse.

“Enough to get the point across,” he concedes, chasing away the thought of Rin knowing about his sex life with the rest of his beer. “That’s it.”

“Settled.” Makoto, pleased with himself and making no attempt to mask it this time, pushes himself off the stool and rounds the kitchen bench to Sousuke’s side. “Now, what about your promotion?”

“Signed the contract today.”

Makoto stands just far enough for Sousuke’s senses not to short-circuit. “Did you read the fine print?”

“Nope,” Sousuke answers. “I know what I’m in for. They briefed me weeks ago.”

“A lot more travelling.”

“Part of the pay upgrade.”

“More beds that aren’t yours.”

“Unavoidable.”

“Less sex.”

That stalls Sousuke’s thoughts. He allows himself a small smirk. “Guess you’re on your own eight days every calendar month.”

“I’m not worried about me,” Makoto says, mirroring his expression. Sousuke feels his lower back come into contact with the counter, not realising he took a step back when Makoto moved forward. “I’m worried about you.”

He finds the dryness in the back of his throat doesn’t abate even when he swallows. “Don’t need to. I’ll live.”

“Can we talk later?” Makoto questions, almost breathily. “There’s other things I want to take care of first.”

“Your cock?” Sousuke teases, but the strain in his voice betrays the underlying desperation that’s been thrumming away under the surface since he stepped foot inside.

“And yours,” Makoto replies without missing a beat. “If you behave.”

* * *

“Makoto. The fuck are you doing back there?”

Sousuke stares up at the artwork Gou insisted on stringing above his bed when he—after much badgering and acceptance of the fact she has world-class taste in interior design—let her choose the furnishing and décor for the apartment. Right now the painting looks like a haphazard mess of colours rather than anything purporting shape or purpose, and it’s the most interesting thing happening in the bedroom.

Behind him, Makoto falters in his rhythm. By some miracle his cock is still hard inside Sousuke, which is more than he can say for his own. He lost it as soon as it became apparent that Makoto is anywhere but here in the present. He might as well be in some far off galaxy for how absentmindedly he’s been fucking Sousuke for the last fifteen minutes.

Palms slippery with sweat tighten on Sousuke’s hips, and one soothes its way up his spine in apology.

“I’m…” Makoto starts, sounding distant, perturbingly so considering their current activity. “I guess I’m distracted.”

Sousuke stifles a groan and grabs for a pillow. This is going to turn into a conversation so he might as well get comfortable. “No shit. Why?”

“I was thinking,” Makoto answers, tentatively. His hand flexes on the back of Sousuke’s thigh. “You’re going to be away a lot for work, and—”

“Do I need to counsel you _and_ Rin through this?” Sousuke asks, neglecting to filter the exasperation out of his tone.

Leave it to Makoto to ruminate on a non-issue because he knows it’s going to cause problems for Rin until it sinks in, at which point things will return to normal, as if nothing was ever wrong. If past history is any indicator, that’s twenty-four hours or so.

“I’m not upset,” Makoto protests. “Not for me, anyway. You’ll be spending a lot of time on your own. Doesn’t that bother you?”

“Not as much as it seems to bother you.” Somehow Makoto is _still_ hard, and Sousuke mutters into the pillow, “Get out of me if you want to talk.”

He feels Makoto go a bit rigid behind him in realisation. “Sorry.”

Sousuke starts to tell him to stop apologising for once in his life, but the loss of Makoto’s cock is a reminder of the orgasm that’s been torn away from him, and all he manages is to bite down a growl of disappointment. “Get down here.”

Pillowtalk without fucking is a new one for them. When Makoto’s head hits the pillow opposite, he gazes earnestly at Sousuke with eyes that could bring him to his knees.

Sousuke decides he can forgo an orgasm or two to assuage Makoto’s anxieties. He sinks down now Makoto isn’t holding him facedown to the bed anymore, gets comfortable lying on his side, and clasps the back of Makoto’s neck. The grip is commanding but light, and Makoto pays him due attention, lips thinning to a line.

“Eight days a month,” he repeats. It’s like rewinding the conversation he had with Rin earlier, but with the internal conflict of arousal warring with concern for Makoto’s welfare. “Be too busy to worry about getting lonely.” A wry smirk tugs at his lips. “Can’t say the same for you, though.”

As he expected, Makoto’s eyes drop. He looks guilty just for having the thought, and Sousuke gives him a light shake. Makoto’s face snaps back up to his.

“You could come with me.”

One of Makoto’s brows goes up. The scepticism is such a close echo of Haru that Sousuke feels what was left of his erection wither away. “I’d be in your way.”

“I’m offering,” Sousuke says. “You don’t have to take me up on it.”

“Traveling with you?”

Sousuke finds the sheet and yanks it around their bodies, then drapes an arm over Makoto’s hip. “Yeah. You might get bored, but a change of scenery might not be a bad idea for you. Or you can stay here and have Haru and Rin for company.”

Makoto smiles and edges a bit closer. “When’s your next trip?’

“A fortnight,” Sousuke answers. “Tokyo.”

“Oh, so only an hour flight.”

“And a drive from the airport.”

“That’s forty minutes at most.”

“Longer than you usually last,” Sousuke taunts, grinning when Makoto half-heartedly swats at his bicep.

“I can’t fuck you when I have something on my mind.”

“Speaking of,” Sousuke ventures. He slides a hand under the sheet to find Makoto at half-mast. The effort to get them both back to that state is more trouble than it’s worth when it’s already 11PM. He closes his eyes in disappointment. “Shit.”

Makoto drags a palm across Sousuke’s hip in a furtive attempt to see if he has any ground to stand on. His smile turns impish. “Like you can talk.”

“We did talk,” Sousuke says. “You staying?”

“I can go.”

“But you don’t want to.”

Makoto tips his head to stare up at the ceiling. “It’s half an hour on the train.”

“So stay. Stop making excuses and ask.”

There’s a moment of silence while Makoto wrestles with his pride. His eyes tilt back to Sousuke, and he raises an arm in invitation. Sousuke takes it without question, shifting closer until he’s sharing Makoto’s pillow and Makoto’s arms are around him in a loose but comforting grip. “Can I stay over?”

The answer finds Sousuke before Makoto’s lips find his temple. “Yeah.”

Makoto’s gaze holds his until drowsiness starts to set in and the day’s troubles dissipate in a haze of warmth.

He cracks an eye open. “Don’t forget to book a ticket in the morning.”

Makoto’s mouth creases. “For Tokyo?”

“For Tokyo,” Sousuke mumbles. “Seats go fast.”

“So what are we doing there?” Makoto asks, the tip of his nose brushing against Sousuke’s.

“Closing a deal with another company.”

“You don’t get any time to yourself?”

“You mean time for you.”

“Well,” Makoto pauses, then nods, “yeah.”

Sousuke regards him with a lazy amusement. “I can take the Saturday off.”

“I’ve never been to Tokyo,” Makoto confesses, fingers dipping down the back of Sousuke’s deltoid in a thoughtless touch that, combined with the memory of the city where he was ranked among and coached alongside the nation’s best swimmers, stirs something in Sousuke that he’d sooner forget.

He catches Makoto’s hand in his own. “Guess you want me to show you around.”

“If it’s not too much trouble now that you’re a big-shot jet-setting corporate kingpin.”

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](http://sierrasuke.tumblr.com/) ◇ [twitter](https://twitter.com/sierrasuke)
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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